FAQ

Each tools is provided with one or more written documentation and tutorial videos. For further support you may join the Discord server.

Yes, this option is enabled on the Artstation store.

Procedural denotes an item which is obtained through computation. User sets up parameters and a generator creates the item based on these parameter values. For texturing and materials, this has several benefits:

• Resolution independence: the texture may be generated at any resolution.
• Non-destructive: modifying a parameter value changes the design, but going back to the previous value restores it exactly as it was previously.
• Random variations: a procedural generator usually features a "random seed" to handle random variations. This means some aspects of the procedural generation may be randomized within certain ranges, and this seed references such a random variation. Modifying the seed value, all the random properties take new values and the design randomly changes within defined parameters. Going back to a previous seed value restores the design exactly as it was before the change.

PBR stands for Physically Based Rendering. This is a Computer Graphics (CG) technique used to approximate some physical properties of real-wold materials (in particular regarding light) in a standardized way for renderers/game engines. This translates into a set of textures, each defining values for a given material property. Most of our tools generate PBR textures which may be used in any supporting PBR renderer/game engine.

A Substance is a term coming from the Adobe Substance 3D ecosystem. It is represented as a binary file with the SBSAR extension (or SBS extension for the source material), is created into Substance 3D Designer and may be used into any Substance 3D host (as SBSAR). This is a procedural or parametric material requirering a Substance 3D runtime/host to be rendered. Substances generate PBR textures of any resolution using a set of user defined parameters. The main benefits of Substances are:

• Portability: any Substance 3D host can render a Substance. Many CG software support Substances through add-ons/plugins, such as Blender. Substance 3D is also an industry standard in Computer Graphics and video games.
• Lightweight: SBSAR are only a few kilo-bytes and may generate up to 8K PBR textures.
• Parametric & Realtime: modifying a Substance parameter automatically generates a new render almost instantly (GPU support).
• Qualitative: Substances may generate extremely realistic and complex materials fully procedurally.

Most of our tools consist in Substances and benefit from these properties.

HairTG-Cards uses Substance 3D Painter to design the hair textures instead of Designer in HairTG-Hair&Fur, even though the Designer option is still available in the Pro edition. In Painter, the HairTG-Cards plugin simplifies and automates many aspects of the hair design creation, which is also more intuitive and predictable. HairTG-Cards also features new procedural card modeling tools for Blender based on Geometry Nodes, enabling to use a dynamic material directly inside Blender, providing a complete workflow to create parametric card-based hair/fur models.

Yes! HairTG-Cards Mini is free, it is a limited version of HairTG-Cards with enough features to experiment with the workflow. It also includes a tutorial video.